Evidence has been brought forward that there exists a direct timing relationship between the articulator movements associated with vowel production and those associated with consonant production. Tuller and others have interpreted such results as evidence for a model of speech production that posits a metrical relationship between vowels and their coproduced consonantal neighbors [cf. Harris et al., in Invariance and Invariability in Speech Production, edited by J. Perkell and D. Klatt (Erlbaum, Hilldale, NJ, 1986); and Tuller et al., J. Exp. Psychol. 9, 829–833 (1983)]. A more strictly segmental ordering of speech events could be posited to handle such data. The difference between these models can be brought to light by making reference to statistical correlations between the timing latencies of various articulatory events [cf. K. Munhall, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 78, 1548–1553 (1985)]. This study investigates the effects of stress pattern and syllable structure on articulator timing, using x-ray microbeam traces of jaw, tongue blade, and lip movement. Unlike in earlier studies, real English words were used. Each token was placed in two contexts, natural sentences and short, frame sentences. The effects of these two environments are also to be noted. The traces will also be used to replicate the velocity-displacement relationship in the movement of the jaw, found in earlier studies of reiterant speech [Kelso et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 77, 266–280 (1985)].